page_title: Hammerwood Park
section_title: 1921–1982: decline and dereliction
hierarchical_section_title: Hammerwood Park / History / 1921–1982: decline and dereliction
context_page_description: Hammerwood Park is a country house in Hammerwood, near East Grinstead, in East Sussex, England. It is a Grade I listed building. One of the first houses in England to be built in the Greek Revival architectural style, it was built in 1792 as the first independent work of Benjamin Henry Latrobe. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner as a 'demonstration of primeval force', the house was owned by Led Zeppelin from 1973 until 1982.
context_section_description: In 1921, the remains of the estate – comprising the house and 329 acres of land – were taken up by Lt. Col. Stephen Hungerford Pollen CMG (1868–1935) after a career in the British Army, having been ADC to Lords Lansdowne and Elgin (respective Viceroys of India), winning medals for service in that country and South Africa, and serving in the Tirah Expedition in 1897. His family were the first residents to enjoy an electricity supply and water from the mains.
  There remained a full complement of eleven or twelve – by differing accounts – indoor staff for the duration of the Pollens' time at Hammerwood, and he contributed the land, and a quarter of the building costs, for the building of the Hammerwood and Holtye Hall. It is a strange coincidence that one of Lt. Col. Pollen's ancestors, Richard Pollen (brother of Sir John Pollen, Bt.) married the daughter of S. P. Cockerell, the architect under whom Latrobe studied. After the death of Lt. Col. Pollen in 1935, the Kirwan Taylor family bought Hammerwood; they were the owners when the Second World War broke out. Like many large houses, it was requisitioned for use by the armed forces, becoming home to 200 soldiers (including the cricketer Denis Compton, and a contingent from the Canadian Army). No. 660 Squadron RAF operated from an airstrip to the north of the park from November 1943, and the SOE flew Westland Lysanders from the same strip for a time.
  After the war, John Chattell (born 1931) bought the estate, dividing the house into eleven apartments. However, dry and wet rot became increasingly problematic and the house uninhabitable; its listed building description (written after a visit in November 1953) noted that it was already 'empty and boarded up', and placed it at Grade II status (it was later upgraded to Grade I). In 1973, rock band Led Zeppelin bought Hammerwood at auction with the hope of turning it into a music centre, recording studio and flats. Although the house did make an appearance at the beginning of the film The Song Remains the Same, their plans did not progress. Significant vandalism saw three tons of lead removed from the roof, compromising it in fourteen different places and allowing thousands of gallons of water to leak into the structure. The progression of the dry and wet rot accelerated, leading the house to become increasingly structurally unsafe. The house was subsequently boarded up in 1976, and put on sale in 1978.
caption: A postwar Auster Mk V, of the type based at Hammerwood from November 1943, in wartime colours
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